About - GovHack

About GovHack

GovHack, an international competition, seeks forward-thinking people of all abilities and challenges them to take their hand at making productive use of the wealth of open data available to us in everyday life. Join thousands of others and apply your creativity, problem solving and critical thinking skills to design a project in what has now become the largest open data hackathon in the southern hemisphere, and one of the largest in the world.

Why does GovHack matter

Formed with the objective to raise the profile of open government data, GovHack has since evolved to encompass the following objectives:

To provide an opportunity through open data for government, citizens and industry to collaborate, gain knowledge and develop new skills;
To showcase open data as a mechanism for identifying and solving deep-rooted social, economic and environmental challenges;
To impress upon Government the economic and societal value of quality, machine- readable, standardised open data;
To highlight the increasing value of open data as a tool to promote transparency, strengthen democracy, and develop trust.

Purpose

We are a festival of ideas that, by making use of the government data available to the public, create projects that better our lives and communities.

Vision

‘GovHack in a Box’ – GovHack is a package: a template with a scalable model that operates in Australia and New Zealand and has been adapted and delivered in other countries, under licence to GovHack Australia, to facilitate open data literacy internationally.

Values

Inclusive

We’re for everyone! age-less, diverse, accessible, safe and secure

Free

All our events, everywhere, for everyone

Hackers first

We prioritise the needs of the community who are participating

Regional

We’re driving GovHack into regional towns for regional talent participation. GovHack is not just for cities.

Volunteer-driven

Passionate volunteers are the change makers to bring GovHack alive

Transparent

Accountable, published communications, timely and available release of GovHack’s own data

Open Access

Advocate for open data, open source, shareable, adaptable

FAIR

findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable

GovHack Board, Constitution & Legal Status

GovHack Australia Limited is an Australian limited liability public company. We have a board of directors and members. We operate as a not-for-profit as defined by our constitution.